Джон Макдональд - You Live Once

I thought of everybody I knew, and I could think of only two people in the whole world who would listen to me and believe me. Tory Wylan and Toni MacRae. Tory was far away, but Toni was close.

I moved like a thief through the adjoining back yard. Through a window I saw a woman washing dishes, white dishes with blue rims under hard white fluorescence. I kicked a child’s tin toy and scurried into deeper shadows and waited until my heart quieted. I stood by a lilac bush and looked at the lighted windows of the big yellow house. I had an insane wish to throw my head back and yell, “Toni! Toni!” Cry of terror; plea for help. Child in the night.

I circled the big yellow house, all but the front side, staying back far enough so I could see the high windows, but I did not see her. I worked my way back to the original place. I saw her then, in a second story window near the rear of the house. She walked by in front of the window, wearing a yellow robe, both hands fooling with her hair at the back of her dark head. I crouched and felt the ground and found three small stones. The first one rapped off the wood beside her window. The second made a clear sharp clink against the glass. Toni appeared in the window. The light was behind her so that I couldn’t see her expression. I threw the last one and it hit the glass, startling her. No one was looking out the other windows. I took my lighter out and held it near my chin and lighted it. The night wind wavered the flame. I put my hand in the area of light and crooked my finger a few times in a beckoning gesture before a stronger puff of wind blew the flame out.

She stood there, not moving. I could guess what was going on in her head: the boss was now reaching for the payoff. I guessed at her anger, yet knew somehow that curiosity would bring her down — and besides, she would want a chance to express indignation. She moved away from the window. When she appeared again she was dressed. She looked down and then left the window. A minute or so later she came walking down through the grass beside the house.

Twenty feet from me she said in a clear voice that seemed audible all over the city, “Mr. Sewell, exactly what do you think you’re doing?”

“Hush! Please!” My voice was a frightened croak.

She must have sensed the way I felt. She came close to me and whispered, “What on earth is the trouble?”

“The police are looking for me, Toni. They want to arrest me for the murder of Mary Olan.”

“That’s simply stupid! You couldn’t kill anybody.”

“Please, please don’t raise your voice like that, Toni. I didn’t kill her. But I’ll tell you what I did do. I found her body in my closet Sunday morning. I put the body in my car and took it out and left it where they found it. Now they can prove I did that. And if they can prove I did that...”

She stood silently in the darkness. “You fool, Clint! You utter damn fool!”

“I know, I know. I did it, I was stupid, I can’t take it back.”

“You better go right on down there and tell them just what you did.”

“You don’t know the whole thing. You don’t know how bad it looks.”

“You can’t tell them the truth?”

“I didn’t tell them in the beginning. I don’t dare to now.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“This sounds silly as hell. I don’t know what I expect you to do. I just wanted to tell somebody. I just wanted to tell you. So it’s stupid. All right.”

She looked down and kicked lightly at the grass. “If you run and hide it’ll look even worse.”

“I know that! But what can I do. I can’t keep standing here. I wish I could tell you the whole thing.”

“Without any lies? Without leaving out any part of it?”

“I’m off lies, Toni. I’ve given them up. They don’t pay off.”

“You ought to go right to the police.”

“We can’t argue that here.”

She turned and looked at the house. There was just enough light from the house for me to see she was biting her underlip.

“I don’t want to get you involved,” I said.

“Shut up a minute. Have you got your car?”

“They took it away.”

“I suppose they’re watching your place.”

“There’s a man in there waiting for me to come home. They think I went out for a walk. They’re cruising around looking for me.”

“You can come to my room it you do exactly what I tell you to do.”

“I don’t want to get you involved.”

“I am involved. Now listen. There’s back stairs. They start from the back hall, outside the kitchen. Take your shoes off.”

She handled it like an expert. She went into the kitchen to create a diversion while I crept partway up the narrow staircase. She left the kitchen and walked noisily up the stairs. As soon as she passed me, I followed in her wake, stepping in her same cadence. I waited at the top, behind the door, while she went down the hall to her room. She opened her room door, looked back toward me and nodded. I moved silently down the hall and slipped into her room. She came in behind me, closed her door and locked it. She crossed the room and closed the blinds at the two windows. I felt weak and shaken. There was one overstuffed chair. I sat in it and lighted a cigarette.

After a few moments I was able to look around the room. It was an ugly room but she had worked hard on it. The high double bed dominated the room. The walls were an unhappy green. Two small lamps with opaque shades muted the ugliness. I could see through the half open door into a small private bath. She had a small corner bookshelf, a wrought iron magazine rack, a double hotplate atop a small cabinet for dishes. It distressed me that the life of Toni should be compressed into this characterless room. I imagined she dated often, she was certainly handsome enough. But there cannot be a date every night. There had to be the alone nights, washing out things, reading, doing her hair and nails, listening to the small coral-plastic radio. The closet door was ajar. Her clothes hung neatly racked, shoes neatly aligned on the floor. She moved over and closed the closet door. The room had a clean smell of her. Fragrant soap, touch of perfume, hint of starch and rustle.

She put an ash tray beside me, moved a straight chair over directly in front of me, and sat there, so close our knees nearly touched. She leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t even whisper loudly, Clint. She’d make me move out tonight if she knew I had a man in here.”

“All right. I’ll tell it from the beginning.”

“Not from the time you found her body. From the very, very beginning, the day you met her.”

There was a certain avidity in Toni’s dark eyes. She wanted to know all. So I told her all there was to tell. It took a long time. She would ask questions, not often. She looked almost sick when I told about getting the body into the car, about the way it had rolled down the little hill until the tree stopped it. When I told about the can and the thread, she said, “I don’t understand.”

“That was one of the cans I used to disguise the shape of her in the tarp. When I pushed it down into the tarp it tore that thread off her skirt. I didn’t see it when I threw the can into the back end of the car.”

“Can they prove it came from her skirt?”

“I’m sure they can. They have ways.”

We stopped talking as someone walked heavily down the hall right by her door. She asked a few more questions. She got up restlessly and walked around the room, touching things absently, straightening them. She sat on the bed, frowning beyond me. She looked at me and tried to smile, then blushed and looked away. Her blush underlined our nearness, the strangeness of the situation.

I went over and stood looking down at her. “Now do you think I should turn myself in?”